Khellian Mythos
Excerpts will be posted here, pending updates. Prehistory Before legend, before myth, before time and space, there existed only a primal chaos. Out of that chaos the elder gods awakened, entities of immeasurable power; the dregs of the chaos coalesced to form the first men, who lived alongside the gods in harmony. Their cooperation led to miraculous advancements and creations not seen in the hands of mortals since – the residuals left by the recession of the chaos empowered the works of magecraft that the first civilization wrought, and the gods taught mankind all that was in their power. The Aurean Era was a time of miracle and marvel. Not much history survives from that time, even in the form of oral tradition, so I cannot spare more words for the sake of accuracy. However, suffice to say that the first civilization, calling themselves Ix, left remnants that are still visible across the realm today. The Ixions’ pride was also their downfall. A machine was invented, the apogee of Ixion knowledge, which possessed a curious ability – to draw out and harness the power in any living entity, with the ability to affect even the gods. Naturally, the gods were shocked at the creation of such a device; and so began the Nightfall. A cataclysmic conflict between mortal and immortal that spanned centuries, it led to the extinction of countless lives, but man’s persistence overcame divine might. And so it was that a nameless god, who some scholars call Rin, and others ουδέν, decided to cast himself from the world, and in thus doing tear a great rift in the fabric of creation. Invested with the authority of his brethren, he split the essence of the divine into uncountable fragments. Without the axiomatic presence of the gods to safeguard the world, chaos quickly crept in, and in time the glory of Ixion civlization fell to teeming masses of anarchic monstrosities. Without any notable inhabitants, the prime material had peace for a time. The shards of divinity, so carelessly cast aside by their previous owner, began to coalesce, each according to its own affinity. In time, ten planes began to orbit the prime: Hafryn, the elemental plane of fire; Neihl, the elemental plane of water; Zerulf, the elemental plane of air; Vignidin, the elemental plane of earth; Belemen, the plane of aether; Inthraute, the plane of shadow; Aendith, the plane of light; Wiann, the plane of darkness; Celosia, the plane of ascendance; and Memyr, the plane of ruin. The elemental planes were the closest to the material, and their proximity, in one way or another, affected the material. It is unknown what heralded the arrival of dragonkind. History is unclear, as always for any unrecorded time, but oral traditions hold that the father of dragons, Ras’flarai’elcorus, carried his brood in the form of five eggs to the current plane from a distant star. Out of wisps of his own soul, Corus created the kobolds, attendants to the draconic race. Although the dragons did not act as a cohesive group, and instead preferred to individually interact with the natives of the prime, the mortals – survivors of the first age – were nevertheless amazed. From draconic wisdom came much of the foundation of modern civilization; indeed, their arrival ushered in a fresh time of rapid advancement, known as the Argyrean Age. Alas, that sterling time was not to last. The consciousness of an entity had awakened in the plane of ruin, disturbed by the extraplanar travelers and agitated by the advancement of the mortals. It descended upon the prime in an unwelcome tempest of destruction and dominion. Styling himself Audin, the Dragon of Twilight, the entity took the shape of a black wyrm whose very presence caused a disturbance in the lawful constituents of reality. Not even Ras’flarai’elcorus possessed the fortitude to drive back the Dragon of Twilight, but a decades-long conflict ensued between Audin and the draconic race, devastating much of the prime as collateral damage for a second time. In a last hour of desperation, however, a new generation of deities descended upon Khellius – Alicia, Arganis, Ferinach, Patrucean, Siria and Reis, with Thalia at their head. Born out of the primordial processes inherent in the formation of the proto-planes, they stemmed Audin’s tide of devastation, but true salvation springed from the hands of the mortals themselves. A chorus of prayer brought forth the goddess Elendra from the plane of Celosia, and with the strength of the eight deities, Audin was sealed away, Memyr cast into the outer depths of Khellian cosmology. --- ''A brief introduction to the Khellian creation mythos. ''Penned by my hand on the 18th of Eulis, 867 years after the foundation of the Empire of Helvenand. Category:Merindor Category:History